Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/199

Rh same, and I am not sure that, occasionally, you, my dear reader, may also do the same—now and then, of course: only when the wind is easterly, and the liver is out of order, or the next morning after a ball. I know that when I have read the Saturday Review, I rise from the perusal believing in Mr. Gladstone, and ready to follow him to the bottom of the Red Sea, or wherever else he desires to lead us; and that when I have read the Pall-Mall Gazette, I am eager to drive my wife and daughters into the Primrose League. Also, I am quite sure that when some person has been warmly lauded in your hearing, dear reader, you take a low view of that individual, and when another has been much disparaged, you take up the cudgels to defend him, though he or she is an absolute stranger to you, and one of whom you have never heard before. I never recommend a watering-place to my friend, sure, if he goes there, he will call it a beastly hole, or dissuade him from buying a horse, by detailing its faults, so certain am I that my words will make him purchase the brute.

In the afternoon of the same day, as the sun was warm, and the air was soft, Saltren took little Giles upon the terrace, and Arminell, who saw them from her window, descended, and joined them there. She was uneasy and impatient to know what the tutor intended doing. Would he come to a full understanding with Lord Lamerton, and would my lord agree to provide for him, if he would depart and keep the secret of his birth undisclosed? Or would Jingles in London discover sufficient to make him suspect that his mother's marriage was valid, and be carried away by ambition to establish his legitimacy at all costs to others?

At the same moment that Arminell came out on the terrace, the rector's wife, Mrs. Cribbage, drove up in her wickerwork pony-carriage, and entered the house to pay a visit to Lady Lamerton.